Known active safety systems—or collision avoidance systems, as they may be called—for use with vehicles may include any number of features intended to help avoid, prevent, and/or mitigate collisions between a host vehicle (i.e., a vehicle equipped with the active safety system) and other objects (e.g., other vehicles referred to herein as “target vehicles”) disposed in the path of the host vehicle. For example, when it is determined that a collision between the host vehicle and an object is imminent, one or more collision avoidance measures, such as, for example, providing alerts to the driver of the host vehicle and taking evasive action with respect to the vehicle itself (e.g., automatically applying the brakes of the host vehicle) may be taken or performed to prevent or at least mitigate the collision. While such active safety systems have proven useful, they are not without their drawbacks.
For example, in conventional systems, one or more collision avoidance measures may be taken with respect to a target object (e.g., target vehicle) in the path of the host vehicle that is closest to the host vehicle (e.g., a target vehicle that is directly ahead or in front of the host vehicle). While this may help to avoid a collision between the host vehicle and the closest target vehicle, in some instances, the closest target vehicle may not pose the greatest collision threat to the host vehicle. More particularly, in certain scenarios where multiple target vehicles are disposed in the path of the host vehicle, a hidden or unseen target vehicle several vehicles ahead may pose the greatest collision threat to the host vehicle. For example, assume that there are two target vehicles in the path of the host vehicle—a first target vehicle that is the closest target vehicle to the host vehicle, and a second target vehicle that is ahead of both the host vehicle and the first target vehicle. If the second target vehicle has braked or stopped, and the first target vehicle is either traveling at the same (or greater) velocity as the host vehicle or is able to perform an evasive maneuver to avoid colliding with the second target vehicle, then the second target vehicle (not the closest target vehicle) poses the greatest collision threat to the host vehicle. It may, therefore, be desirable to take multiple target vehicles into account during the operation of certain active safety systems.